Tuesday of the Twenty-third Week in Ordinary Time
September 12, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/091223.cfm

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Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we hear Paul’s beautiful encouragement to the Colossians to rejoice in their radical union with Christ. This unity, Paul points out, should be the cause for profound thanksgiving and steadfast fidelity.

The world against which Paul cautions his readers sounds similarly antagonistic as our own:

See to it that no one captivate you
with an empty, seductive philosophy
according to the tradition of men,
according to the elemental powers of the world
and not according to Christ.

Colossians 2:8

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The command to “see to it” is a bit intimidating. Paul is saying, “It’s on you, buddy, to stay on course now that you have chosen Christ.” Well just how am I supposed to do that, Paul, in this messy world????

Paul doesn’t leave us simply to our own resources. He reminds us of this powerful truth:

You were buried with Christ in baptism,
in which you were also raised with him
through faith in the power of God,
who raised him from the dead.

Colossians 2:12

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Through Baptism, and through living a Baptismal life, we have experienced our own Resurrection in Christ! We are no longer rooted in the destructible shell of this world. We are tethered to its heart which is the fullness of God.

For in Christ dwells the whole fullness of the deity bodily,
and you share in this fullness in him,
who is the head of every principality and power.

Colossians 2:9-10

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In North America, we are coming into the heart of hurricane season. Even if our neighborhood doesn’t suffer a direct hit, we often feel the powerful fringe effects of a passing storm. Some of our trees stand fast in such winds; some do not.

So it is with us who set out to follow Christ. If we forget our roots, failing to nourish them in the graces offered us, the winds will overcome us. And the overcoming doesn’t have to look as dramatic as a hurricane. It manifests itself in the small, constant choices for self rather than others – those tiny, debilitating acts of uncharity, indifference, judgementalism, gossip, and self-indulgence. These small branches, when they fall one after another from the tree, eventually leave it bare against the heavens.

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Our Alleluia Verse reminds us that we, like the disciples in today’s Gospel, were not chosen to splinter in the wind, but to flourish in the grace of our call, bearing fruit toward eternity:

I chose you from the world,
that you may go and bear fruit that will last,
says the Lord.

John 15:16

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Poetry: from Rumi

Everything you see 
has its roots in the unseen world. 
The forms may change, 
yet the essence remains the same. 
Every wonderful sight will vanish, 
every sweet word will fade, 
But do not be disheartened, 
The source they come from is eternal, growing, 
Branching out, giving new life and new joy. 
Why do you weep? 
The source is within you 
And this whole world is springing up from it.

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Music: The Memory of Trees – Enya

Monday of the Twenty-third Week in Ordinary Time
September 11, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/091123.cfm

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Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our readings affirm this fundamental truth: God’s greatest desire for us is our wholeness.

Paul’s impassioned verses to the Colossians demonstrate how he suffered to assure their spiritual integrity:

Brothers and sisters:
I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake…
… in accordance with God’s stewardship given to me
to bring to completion for you the word of God,
the mystery hidden from ages and from generations past.

Colossians 4:24;28

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False teachers are the cause of the suffering Paul describes. They are charismatic but ill-intentioned people who latch on to a good thing distorting it for their own purposes.

We are painfully familiar with these devious strategies in our own time. For example, good things such as the internet, artificial intelligence, and various drug therapies are discovered and introduced into our culture. These can enhance our lives but, sadly, can also be manipulated to victimize us.

It is profoundly sinful when religion and spirituality are perverted in this way. Yet that is what Paul contended with as he worked for the spread of the Gospel in Asia Minor.

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We are not free of such false teachers in our day. For the sake of money, power, and political influence, counterfeit prophets and evangelists abound throughout history. Jesus encountered such duplicitous leaders in his ministry as well:

The scribes and the Pharisees watched Jesus closely
to see if he would cure on the sabbath
so that they might discover a reason to accuse him.
But he realized their intentions
and said to the man with the withered hand,
“Come up and stand before us.”

Luke 6:7-8

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How do we avoid such entrapments that feed on our desire for honest spiritual fulfillment? Today’s Gospel offers a clue:

Then Jesus said to them,
“I ask you, is it lawful to do good on the sabbath
rather than to do evil,
to save life rather than to destroy it?”

Luke 6:9

Anything that inhibits or destroys the sacred life within us or others can never be of God. The Pharisees misinterpreted and misused the Law. They would have invoked “the sabbath” in order to leave this poor man crippled. But Jesus countermanded them, restoring the man’s right hand, and exposing them for the hypocrites they were.

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Around our world today, how many spurious “laws” are promoted by those who profit from the constraint of others, or who feed their own egos by a controlling prejudice toward anyone different from themselves! How many prejudicial codes inhibit freedom and life for women, refugees, people of color, and those burdened by poverty, disability, or homophobia.

These vulnerable persons come before our prayerful consciousness today just as the man with the withered hand came before Jesus. How do we respond – like Jesus or like the self-deceived Pharisees? Or perhaps we respond somewhere indifferently in-between which is its own kind of sinfulness.

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Prose: from Peter Wehner, Senior Fellow at the Trinity Forum

The aggressive, disruptive, and unforgiving mindset
that characterizes so much of our politics
has found a home in many American churches.

When the Christian faith is politicized,
churches become repositories
not of grace but of grievances,
places where tribal identities are reinforced,
where fears are nurtured,
and where aggression and nastiness are sacralized.

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Music:Take All the Lost Home – Joe Wise

September 9, 2023

Good day, dear friends,

As you may have already discovered, I hit the wrong timing button for tomorrow’s (Sunday’s) reflection. So you have two reflections in your mailbox early today. Make sure you’re reading the one you want today and tomorrow. Sorry about that!

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While I have you here for a minute, I wanted to let you know that Lavish Mercy passed a half million views last week. Also last week, I posted my 2000th reflection. Thanks so much to all of you for your support over these five years of Lavish Mercy. As a little “Thank You”, here’s a re-post of a September reflection for this beautiful Saturday.

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Beautiful September

Being a long-ago teacher, I have always loved September.  It is the sense of new beginning that accompanies these crisp, blue and golden days. 

Remember the fresh batch of school supplies you got every year: 

• that marble copybook that invited you to a heightened level of neatness (perhaps never achieved !)? 
• that perfectly compact and complete pencil box with the little sharpener on the end, promising you clear and accurate answers?
• that un-smudged and malleable soap eraser that would redeem you from any mistake? 
• and that wonderful box of fresh crayons, each standing at attention, ready to translate your genius into a rainbow of creativity?

What a gift it is in life to be given the opportunity for a new beginning.  Every one of us has grown richer in our hearts by both giving and receiving these opportunities.  Every act of inclusion, forgiveness, encouragement, mentoring and graciousness we have given or received has brought a new dawn to our spirits. 

We see so much violence, hatred and meanness in our world. We all mourn its ugly reappearance unrelentingly in the evening news, especially the lives lost of those who hungered for peace. But we must never allow ourselves to be poisoned or diminished by evil. Good will always overcome evil.

How wise it was of the Universal Spirit to give us both day and night.  Their dance of light and dark is a daily reminder to us that with the evening comes refreshment and with the morning renewed joy.  Every day, the Great Hand of Mercy reaches down into our darkness and lifts us up into the drenching light of hope. Do we ever take a moment to let ourselves be awed by that gift? 

Every day is a new box of crayons!  Every day, we can give and receive the chance to start fresh!  How do I want to color my world differently today?  What do I want to outline more clearly in my life?  What gaps in my life are longing to be filled in with the rainbow of my creativity, courage and love? How will I blend the shades of peace into the world around me?

A beautiful verse from the Hebrew Scriptures puts it this way:  

God’s mercies are renewed each morning, 
so great is His faithfulness.

Let yourself bask in that promise, especially in this golden September. It will renew your hope and strength.

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Music: by the way, September is Classical Music Month! Here’s one of my favorites.

Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time

September 10, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/091023.cfm

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Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 95, a favorite of liturgists, and one we have met several times before. What different light might it offer us today as we pray?

The psalm today serves as a bridge between powerful readings about neighborly love and fraternal correction. These readings tell us to listen for God’s heartbeat in our world and to enter its rhythm.

They also tell us to love our neighbor enough that, if she or he is out of synch with God’s rhythm, we help align them by our counsel and example.

Have you ever tried to do that? It’s really tough!

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First of all, we have to be so vigilant about the purity of our own intentions. We can’t instruct our friends in righteousness out of our own confusion. So often, our desire for others to “improve” grows out of our opinionated self-interest. You might remember what Jesus said about extracting the plank from our own eye before removing the splinter from our neighbor’s!

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Next we really have to love our sister or brother and sincerely want their good. We have to forgive them any hurt they have caused us. We have to be bigger than most of us, speaking for myself, are inclined to be.

As the psalm tells us, we can’t have hard hearts. As we approach our sister or brother, our hearts must be softened by listening, patience, understanding, humility and hope. We have to be sure the “voice” we’re sharing comes from God not self.

Harden not your hearts as at Meribah,
as in the day of Massah in the desert,
Where your fathers tempted me;
they tested me though they had seen my works.

And the flip of all this, of course, is that when we are the one out of rhythm, we receive loving correction in the same spirit of openness.

Lots of Grace is needed on both sides of this dance! May we learn and receive it!

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Poetry: The Gift by Li-Young Lee

To pull the metal splinter from my palm
my father recited a story in a low voice.
I watched his lovely face and not the blade.
Before the story ended, he’d removed
the iron sliver I thought I’d die from.

I can’t remember the tale,
but hear his voice still, a well
of dark water, a prayer.
And I recall his hands,
two measures of tenderness
he laid against my face,
the flames of discipline
he raised above my head.

Had you entered that afternoon
you would have thought you saw a man
planting something in a boy’s palm,
a silver tear, a tiny flame.
Had you followed that boy
you would have arrived here,
where I bend over my wife’s right hand.

Look how I shave her thumbnail down
so carefully she feels no pain.
Watch as I lift the splinter out.
I was seven when my father
took my hand like this,
and I did not hold that shard
between my fingers and think,
Metal that will bury me,
christen it Little Assassin,
Ore Going Deep for My Heart.
And I did not lift up my wound and cry,
Death visited here!
I did what a child does
when he’s given something to keep.
I kissed my father.

Music: Let Me Hear Your Voice – Francesca LaRose

Memorial of Saint Peter Claver, Priest

September 9, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/090923.cfm

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Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our readings reveal the freedom that comes with living in the Holy Spirit.

Paul tells his listeners, “You were once alienated and hostile … but God has reconciled you … in the hope of the Gospel.”

The passage doesn’t specify what the Colossians were “alienated and hostile” about, but one can hazard a guess. They had been struggling to find spiritual meaning in a delusive culture. I think we know how they felt!

Paul writes that we have been reconciled – re-balanced – in the death of Christ. What does that mean?

God has now reconciled you
in the fleshly Body of Christ through his death,
to present you holy, without blemish,
and irreproachable before him,
provided that you persevere in the faith,
firmly grounded, stable,
and not shifting from the hope of the Gospel that you heard,

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Our Alleluia Verse offers an answer:

I am the way and the truth and the life, says the Lord;
no one comes to the Father except through me.

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In our daily lives, we can get so mixed up about which way to go, what is the truth, and what gives us life.

Commercial voices tell us the “way” to happiness is to have more of everything, that we will never have all we need, and that our possessions are the measure of our value.

Political voices often tell us a “truth” adapted to their own agendas.

Our socio-economic constructs allow us to value some “lives” over others by draining and directing resources from the powerless to the powerful.

Even our religious hierarchies can manipulate “law” so that it becomes self-serving rather than life-giving.

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Jesus confronts this kind of fallacy in today’s Gospel. The Pharisees thrived on a self-advancing manipulation of the Law. They used the Law as a means to control the social complex to their economic and political advantage.

Jesus tells them the “law” is meaningless if it no longer embodies the spirit. He references David who, on his good days, lived in genuine and direct relationship with God:

Have you not read what David did
when he and those who were with him were hungry?
How he went into the house of God, took the bread of offering,
which only the priests could lawfully eat,
ate of it, and shared it with his companions?”
Then he said to them, “The Son of Man is lord of the sabbath.”

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Our readings assure us that through our faithful Gospel lives we will find sacred reconciliation in God.

…. provided that you persevere in the faith,
firmly grounded, stable,
and not shifting from the hope of the Gospel that you heard ..

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Poetry: excerpt from “The Great Wagon” by Rumi

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other”
doesn’t make any sense.
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.

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Music: Deep Peace – Elaine Hagenberg

Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary September 8, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/090823.cfm

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Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, on our Blessed Mother’s birthday, we pray with the beautiful final verses of Psalm 13.

These verses embody an immense shift in form from the psalm’s early lines. Early on, the psalmist cries out four times, “How long, O Lord?”.

How long: 

• Will you forget me?
• Will you hide your face from me?
• Must I carry sorrow in my soul?
• Will my enemy triumph over me?

Referring to these early verses reminds us that Mary’s life was full of sorrow as well as joy. On a feast like today, we think of Mary in her heavenly glory. But in her lifetime, Mary suffered many sorrows. She was an unwed mother, a refugee, and a widow. She was the mother of an executed “criminal” and a leader of his persecuted band.

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What was it that allowed Mary to transcend sorrow and claim joy? Our psalm verses today help us to understand. They show the psalmist turning to heartfelt prayer, trusting God’s abiding protection.

Look upon me, answer me, LORD, my God!
Give light to my eyes lest I sleep in death,
Lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed,”
lest my foes rejoice at my downfall.

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That deep trust ultimately yields not only peace,
but joy.
Mary, singer of the Magnificat,
is the quintessence of that holy joy.

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But I trust in your mercy.
Grant my heart joy in your salvation,
I will sing to the LORD,
Who has dealt bountifully with me!

Today, in our prayer, we ask Mary to love and guide us through the challenges of our lives.

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Poetry: Three Days – Madeleine L’Engle

Friday:
When you agree to be the mother of God
you make no conditions, no stipulations.
You flinch before neither cruel thorn nor rod.
You accept the tears; you endure the tribulations.
But, my God, I didn't know it would be like this.
I didn't ask for a child so different from others.
I wanted only the ordinary bliss,
to be the most mundane of mothers.

Saturday:
When I first saw the mystery of the Word
made flesh I never thought that in his side
I'd see the callous wound of Roman sword
piercing my heart on the hill where he died.
How can the Word be silenced? Where has it gone?
Where are the angel voices that sang at his birth?
My frail heart falters. I need the light of the Son.
What is this darkness over the face of the earth?

Sunday:
Dear God, He has come, the Word has come again.
There is no terror left in silence, in clouds, in gloom.
He has conquered the hate; he has overcome the pain.
Where, days ago, was death lies only an empty tomb.
The secret should have come to me with his birth,
when glory shone through darkness, peace through strife.
For every birth follows a kind of death, 
and only after pain comes life.

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Music: Magnificat – Daughters of Mary

Thursday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time

September 7, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/090723.cfm

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Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, Paul gives us a textbook on how to pray for one another.

I don’t know about you, but when I pray for other people, it’s usually a prayer like this:

“Dear God, please let Drusilla pass her nursing exam this eighth time trying.” or

“Dear God, please help Joe get well and recover from his unfortunate fall out of the air balloon.”

In other words, I often have a specific result in mind when I pray like this. I tell God how I’d like things to turn out – especially when I pray for myself. 😉

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Paul’s prayer is different. He doesn’t pray for specific results for his Colossian friends. Rather, he prays for those spiritual gifts which will allow his friends to grow fully in grace and holiness, no matter the result of their circumstances:

• to have knowledge of God’s will
• to grow in spiritual wisdom and understanding
• to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord
• to be fully pleasing to God
• to bear fruit in every good work
• to grow in the knowledge of God
• to be strengthened with every power
• to have endurance and patience
• to joyfully give thanks to God

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As you can see, even if Drusilla fails again and Joe ends up with aerophobia, they would still be blessed beyond measure by gifts like the ones Paul prays for.

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In our Gospel, Jesus wants his friends to grow in spiritual gifts as well. To encourage that, he performs a delightful and astounding miracle to shore up his followers’ faith.

Just put yourself on that seashore that morning when two ramshackle boats nearly sank with a tsunami of magic fish! Picture Jesus enjoying his friends’ amazement as the fish tails flew up and wagged in the early morning sunlight. Imagine the profound response this miracle inspired, enough to leave everything behind to embrace its Source!

… astonishment at the catch of fish they had made seized Peter
and all those with him,
and likewise James and John, the sons of Zebedee,
who were partners of Simon.
Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid;
from now on you will be catching men.”
When they brought their boats to the shore,
they left everything and followed him.

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God’s miraculous gifts pour into our lives every day, often by virtue of our friends’ prayers and love. May we receive them with open hearts and pray for them for those whose names we speak to God.

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Poetry: excerpts from A Prayer for My Daughter by W.B. Yeats

Once more the storm is howling, and half hid
Under this cradle-hood and coverlid
My child sleeps on. There is no obstacle
But Gregory’s wood and one bare hill
Whereby the haystack- and roof-levelling wind,
Bred on the Atlantic, can be stayed;
And for an hour I have walked and prayed
Because of the great gloom that is in my mind.

I have walked and prayed for this young child an hour
And heard the sea-wind scream upon the tower,
And under the arches of the bridge, and scream
In the elms above the flooded stream;
Imagining in excited reverie
That the future years had come,
Dancing to a frenzied drum,
Out of the murderous innocence of the sea.

May she be granted beauty and yet not
Beauty to make a stranger’s eye distraught,
Or hers before a looking-glass, for such,
Being made beautiful overmuch,
Consider beauty a sufficient end,
Lose natural kindness and maybe
The heart-revealing intimacy
That chooses right, and never find a friend….

…. In courtesy I’d have her chiefly learned;
Hearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earned
By those that are not entirely beautiful;
Yet many, that have played the fool
For beauty’s very self, has charm made wise,
And many a poor man that has roved,
Loved and thought himself beloved,
From a glad kindness cannot take his eyes.

May she become a flourishing hidden tree
That all her thoughts may like the linnet be,
And have no business but dispensing round
Their magnanimities of sound,
Nor but in merriment begin a chase,
Nor but in merriment a quarrel.
O may she live like some green laurel
Rooted in one dear perpetual place…

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Music: The Prayer – written by David Foster, Carole Bayer Sager, Alberto Testa and Tony Renis